Reading roundup: Craft, magpies, and a lack of Vorkosigans
OK, this feels a bit surreal but... I'm a third of the way through a Vorkosigan book and was considering whether to wait with my reading roundup until I was done with it and include it, but I don't think I'm going to finish it this weekend, probably not until my next commute. It's going fine! I'm enjoying what I'm reading! but it's not calling me back to it when I put it down... I gather from philomytha's write-up that I have another third to go before the pace picks up, so I'm just going to post my other books right now. (This is the eARC of the Cordelia book, of course, which can be found here.)
60. Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five -- this is only the second Craft Sequence book I'm reading, because I was debating where to go from Three Parts Dead and egelantier helpfully explained the various orders in which the series could be read. I was a bit skeptical about Cat being in it, because she was my least favorite part of Three Parts Dead, but I liked her better here, so it all worked out.
This is a really impressive series. Like, the worldbuilding aspects are really neat and original and just plain amusing, and the prose is really great (and works for me in a way that the Matthew Swift prose, say, does not), and the characters are admirable and memorable if not someone I latch onto the way I do with my favorite characters. And, you know, the diversity is really impressive -- not just because there are so many women and POCs in the book, but because the different cultures really do feel different, and this stuff is mindful without feeling either pasted on or anvilicious/brownie-points-seeing, the way it often feels to me, especially in second-world fantasy where all the cultures must furnish their own context or feel pseudo-real world. Like, this book, right? The island culture felt like its own thing to me, and so did the glimpses of Izza's background -- and not monolithic, either. The two main POVs are both women (and both POCs, and one of them is trans), and so many of the supporting characters are, too, Cat and Mara and Ms Kevarian and Teo, as well as random background figures like cops and poets and businesspeople. (Also, the covers always draw my eye because I don't think there's a single non-POC character on any of them -- which, awesome for Gladstone that apparently he doesn't have problems getting his covers whitewashed. Although the person I presume is Kai on the FFF cover does not look anything like my mental image of her, more Chinese than Pacific Islander. But I like that she even has her cane on there, although in the picture it looks like an affectation rather than something she actually needs to get around after her injuries.)
I liked Kai a lot. I like the way Gladstone writes ambitious, big risk-taking, workaholic women in general -- as I mentioned in my write-up of the first one I read, I think, it's a character type you don't see very often outside of female antagonists, or as something to be softened and reformed as part of the character arc. I liked that Kai, like Tara, like Ms Kevarian, is good, and knows she's good, and goes and does the things she feels need to be done. And it's not just ambition, too, it's ambition and a strong sense of self wedded to a vocation, doing something they truly believe in. I'm not sure if I like Kai or Tara more at this point. Tara is funnier, I guess, and I appreciate that in a character, but Gladstones characters are also not the kind of characters I really fall for -- they are characters I respect, but that's kind of where it stops. I also like the way Kai being tans is presented; it's something we learn about her only later on (though I knew about it when I started the book), and it's not what her story is about, but it's also a part of her past, something that occasionally but powerfully colors her reactions to situations and to other people, like the pre-transformation trans acolyte she notices at the library. I've thought about it, and I think what I like best is how this aspect feels like an important but organic facet of her character: Kai is a person who does not lets anything except her own will and sense of self define her, whether what stands in opposition to that is a Penitent's whispers or corporate dogma or her own biology. It's all part and parcel of her integrity (in the sense of being herself), and it makes sense.
Other characters: I actually never got too much of a sense for Izza; I liked her in a sort of surface way, but I didn't feel like I knew her nearly well enough, because she's so busy running away from herself for most of the book. Jace was the kind of antagonist I like, someone who genuinely believes he's doing the right thing for the greater good (which was refreshing, after despicably self-serving Denovo). I liked Margot in his preparation for death, careful to edit the final draft of his life, and I liked Mako, and really liked the reveal, which I thought was very well handled -- it wasn't something I felt like I'd guessed even though it was pretty clear that he was more than just a random blind old man, and I even noted the similarity of his name to the name of Makewa. And I liked smiling swimmer Teo, and wanted to see more of her, which is why I went on to Two Serpents Rise as soon as I was done with the book, even though I'd thought I'd space them out a bit.
Oh, and the conversation between Teo and Kai about gods and faith and the origin of humanity is probably my favorite aggressively-Bechdel-Test-passing conversation ever. Here are some of my favorite bits of it:
Kai: What do you believe?
Teo: The fossil record. Old bones in caves. Evolution.[...]
Kai: Zurish gods made the sentient ice that walks Koschei's empire -- or the ice made the gods. Some dragons claim they made themselves, but you never really know with dragons.
Teo: Those are exceptions and you know it.
Kai: "An eon or so back, some people landed here after a long voyage, either from Kath or the Gleb, the Hidden Schools are still arguing which. And here, we became human."
Teo: "I get all that stuff about truth, but in the end you just sound like my girlfriend's art critic buddies, the ones who get a bottle of wine in their systems and weasel over whether we can ever really know anything at all, and how [...] any attempt to discuss objective fact buys into imperialist cultural narratives."
Kai: Things only happen [here] because a person demands them to.
Teo: Gravity still works though.
Kai: Gravity's a hard habit to break.
Teo: So's a heartbeat.
Kai: You've felt gravity longer than you've had a heart.
I like the worldbuilding setup of the book, the corporate magic/divine corporation version of the offshore tax haven, inaccessible to other gods, the idol industry which proves to be not as hollow as it was intended to be, the way it grew out of tragedy (the loss of the real gods in the God Wars) and that what remains, though apparently flourishing, is flourishing in an alien way to the island's real roots. The Penitents are a great addition to the world -- nightmarish, but one can see how they would have seemed like a good idea at some point, and they feel fitting for the setting, and for the personification of confinement that both Izza and Kai have nightmares about.
It feels more nuanced in this book than in the first one, less... sterile, which was a pleasant surprise. I mean, I do like the necromantic lawyers and their legalese and the networks of mortgaged soulstuff, but it makes for a fairly bleak world, which I think is one of the reasons that I enjoy these books without loving them outright. But the stuff at the end, with the network of idols learning selfhood, godhood from the shard of Seril, that was actually kind of hopefull-feeling. I'm glad that, in internal chronology, this is the last book.
The prose felt toned down a bit in this one, either because Gladstone's writing has toned down or because most of the POVs and/or setting are less conducive to that. I missed the really bright phrases, but it worked well for me on the whole, and I still noted down a lot of quotes:
Describing the pool: "Bubbles of reality jellyfished up to the distant surface."
Ms Kevarian: Her "eyes held neither pity nor humor, only a curiosity like Kai had seen in birds' eyes, alien, evaluative, and predatory."
Ms K: You imply that it [an idol] has gender and personhoold.
Kai: Language is weird like that. Archipelagese has a fine set of gender-neutral pronouns, but mainlanders don't like them for some reason.
"editorial by some bleeding heart in Iskar, suggesting that all the other bleeding hearts in Iskar join a crusade to stop the civil war in the Northern Gleb. No plan, just hand wringing and noble rhetoric."
Junk in Jace's office: "An onyx statue of a beetle, when touched, came to life and began carving the mountain's stone into new beeltes, who copied themselves in turn. A stack of papers in one corner had proved impossibly dense: seven hirelings strained to lift a single sheet. The papers had to be burned in place, and the resulting stink -- of burnt hair and melted flesh and not of paper at all -- lingered in the volcano's executive levels for a week.
After Izza tells Cat she's from Northern Gleb: "Izza saw behind those eyes the twist of thought she hated, that she'd run from the Old World to escape: the sudden re-evaluation, the swell of pity."
On being a priestess:
Izza: I know what that feels like, Faith seems fun. So does leadership. Everyone listens to you. Then you realize that it means the bastards come for you first.
Cat: The bastards always come, sooner or later. At least a priestess knows she'll be first in line.
Izza: Not much consolation.
Cat: No, I guess not.
Lines I liked about poetry:
"verses slipping tense and tenseless from Kathic to Archipelagese and back."
"And on and on, rapt and rigid, chest peacocked out, neck bullfrog bulged."
"Watch your fame grow in her [the muse's] absence as you struggle to mate dead words on dry paper."
"Would you tell Cathbart not to write about colors because he was blind? Or not to write about angelic battles because he'd never fought in one."
Mako: "Cathbart fought in the Tyranomachia, back in Camlaan, and angels never made so grand a war. And he'd seen for forty years before he lost his sight. You think we forget how these work once we lose the use of them?"
Mako: "Not to mention he thinks he's the only person on the planet ever thought of alliteration."
"Unnaturally white and gleaming, writhing with human bodies, the hotel reminded Izza of a layer cake overrun by ants and set afire."
"a thronged intersection where smuggler priests promised pieces of cut-rate heaven to passersby."
"the waitress looked over. Her sallow, up-all=night expression made her seem ten minutes' hassle short of serial murder, and with Mako she was counting down the seconds."
Mako re: Margot:
"He was a soldier?"
"No. he had that same aftermath feel though, an echo looking for the noise that made it."
"Point is, if you're a young man and you have nothing harder than a clock to fight against, 'fore long you make up things to do with your time."
"those boys got scars that night they'll wear with pride on day, once the fear fades enough to let pride back in."
Cat: "Gods, I love sports. All the excitement of real news, only it doesn't matter so you don't have to worry about it."
Cawleigh: "This is kingship, politics, murder. Awful lot of murder. Especially parties for some reason." (in-universe GRRM? :P)
"Twilling sounded genuine and superficial at once, as if he had read books about empathizing with employees and almost understood them."
"He hoped to offer friendly biographers no embarrassments, and unfriendly biographers no ammunition."
"Kai always made herself hot cocoa before a nightmare."
"Drowning sailors on the battered raft of her mind threw sacrifices to the adrenaline storm: snatches of poetry, school rhymes half-remembered, and at last, despairing, an image of a beggar girl on the sidewalk in front of Edmond Margot's apartment."
"Nick says they tried stuffing kids in Penitents once, but it didn't work. We break different."
"and he always felt it was a mistake to silo verticals, which phrase Kai understood but felt dirty for understanding."
"The poor swarm Dresediel Lex and Alt Coulumb in hungry millions, yes, but the most miserable hap-toothed glory-addict quivering on a Coulumbite street corner stands on the backs of a hundred men in lands he can't even name."
"And I won't sit here at the bar and drink self-pity until this world looks like the best possible."
Teo: "The only possible reason for their allies to come after me would be if your Order could prove I helped steal something they claim they don't have from a vault they can't afford to admit has been breached."
"where centuries ago the people of the islands imposed a beginning on time."
"The ocean lay like a blue razor against the throat of the sky."
Also, what is it with Gladstone and card houses? Temoc in the next book, and Kai and her sister in this one...
bingo: book with trans protagonist [this ticks off another bingo on the Serious card], book with POC protagonist
62. Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise -- I enjoyed this one less than either Full Fathom Five or Three Parts Dead, which I gather is not an uncommon view. I definitely still think it's a good book, and I'm glad to have read it, but it's not as FUN as the first one and did not feel as hopeful as FF5. Like, the post-God Wars world is a dark one in the other books, too, both for the magical horrors and the mundane reasons of poverty and addiction and the ugly side of ambition and all those things. But Tara is kind of hilariously oblivious to how creepy things are for much of the book, and for all the darkness in Izza's background and the fragility of island life, FF5 felt uplifting more than anything, and 2SR is just... not. It's probably a good thing this book exists, but it was too grim for my taste, even though there were definitely funny bits.
Two things about this I really liked: Caleb's relationship with Temoc and Caleb's relationship with Teo (whom I knew slightly from reading FF5 first) -- and come the end of the book, I liked the interaction between Teo and Temoc, too. I liked Teo and Caleb's friendship a lot -- it felt very real and natural and fun, and I perked up whenever they got to spend any time together. (I'm a lot less fond of Teo's girlfriend, who just seemed really tedious, in a "Tumblr SJW" sort of way -- I mean, caricature-level almost, though the narrative treats her with respect.)
Caleb and Temoc's relationship is so interesting! The first thing they made me think of was Duv Galeni and Ser Galen, for the ideological terrorist/resistance fighter vs bought-into-the-new-system divide, and I kept thinking how much more reasonably Temoc was portrayed, both in terms of what he was willing to do for his cause and in terms of the love and degree of acceptance he has for Caleb, despite their ideological differences. I found him so sympathetic that I had the very odd feeling of agreeing with him (vs Caleb) some of the time -- odd because I really hadn't expected to find the pro-human sacrifice side more reasonable. He makes some good points, though, the sacrifice still being there, just one of degrees, amortized and hidden from view, responsibility spread around so nobody has to feel like they're getting their hands dirty. And staking the fate of an entire city on a long shot out of squeamishness... Then, of course, Spoilers! his actual plan, the betrayal of Teo, who counts as a willing sacrifice only on a technicality. Anyway, I may have started with Ser Galen, but after a while the ideologically opposed parent-child pair Temoc was reminding me of were Roland and Kate Daniels, except that Temoc breaks into Caleb's house to build card houses and ask him about his love life, not to leave freshly baked cookies. I'm definitely looking forward to more Temoc in Last First Snow, although I do think I'll take a break before I embark on more Gladstone.
Kopil was kind of entertaining, too, but not on the same level. But just the mundanity of a skeleton walking around with a coffee cup, foot-bones clacking, was really amusing.
What didn't work for me was Mal, either as love interest or antagonist. She just wasn't interesting, compared to the other characters, or especially believable. And Caleb's infatuation with her and chasing after her made the plot drag.
I do actually like Caleb, but he is a much more "average joe" sort of protagonist than the other books have. I mean, Abelard is, too, and it's quite endearing, considering the later reveals, but the other books have alternating POVs, at least some of which are intense and driven, and most of 2SR is Caleb's mind, until fairly late in the plot and with the exception of the interludes.
I also felt like the prose dragged for me more here than in the other books -- the description of the chases, the fight against Allie, the rioting in the city (which introduces some POVs that I really did not feel added much to the proceedings). From a worldbuilding perspective, it was neat to get a Craft take on industry after the lawyers of book one and finance stuff of FF5, but it also felt less inventive and varied, in the grand worldbuilding scheme. Not as strong as the other books, in other words.
Quotes:
"a ten-story metal pyramid built by an Iskari architect mimicking Quechal designs. Over the door, a plaque bore the building's name in an art deco perversion of High Quechal script"
"They forced him to complete forms in triplicate, in cuneiform, in blood."
"Caleb was almost glad for the blackout: darkness made the room look like the chaotic abode of a dangerous mind, rather than a chamber cluttered with a young man's junk."
Alaxic to Kopil: "I leave you to iherit the rising salaries and health-care costs of my employees, my tempestuous engineering department, and my other bureaucratic diseases."
"Their games proceeded in traingular fashion -- Caleb lost to Teo, who loved chess though she did not study it, and Teo lost to Sam, who was too busy railing against the hierarchical relationships encoded in the rules to notice how blatantly Teo let her win. Sam lost to Caleb, and the cycle repeated."
"Death takes time. There are classes, support groups, premortem exercises."
Alaxic and Kopil:
"Makes me glad I'm retired."
"Are you really?"
"Glad?"
"Retired."
Mal: "You don't get to choose your parents. Why should your gods be any different?"
"Teo had tickets to the Eclipse Games, but Sam refused to come -- the contest was part of the commercialization of a sacred holiday, she said, though she lacked a trace of Quechal blood."
Fireworks: "Empire of Deathless Koschei ordered a solid month of festivities to celebrate the construction of the Dread Lord's golem son."
"'Father,' he said. 'Put Teo down, or y9ou'll have to hit me again.'"
Temoc: I apoogize for hitting you. I do not relish striking women.
Teo: Thank you, for your condescending, sexist apology.
Caleb: If we sacrifice someone to stop Mal, she's won.
Temoc: Sophistry. If we sacrifice someone to defeat her, she has lost.
"Girlfriend?" Temoc said.
Teo: Do you have a problem with that?"
"No," he replied. "You would risk your own death to save the city."
"Of course."
Caleb taking Temoc on his shoulders: "The world pitched and righted itself, heavier. [...] The first ten steps were the hardest, except for the next ten, and the ten after that."
"Sanity was the gap between perception and desire, and that gap had closed. [...] What could she imagine that she could not create? What could she hate that she could not destory?"
61. KJ Charles, The Magpie Lord (A Charm of Magpies #1)
63. KJ Charles, A Case of Possession (A Charm of Magpies #2) -- these books were actually rec'd to me back during fandom_stocking, but I promptly forgot about them, until they started appearing in Yuletide discussions. I hadn't realized/had forgotten that one of the principals was a magical policement, which intrigued me, for obvious reasons. I tried the first book, and it was fun enough, in a mindless sort of way -- the literary equivalent of cotton candy. But cotton candy was what I was feeling like at the time, so I read the second one, too.
The setting is Victorian-England-with-magic -- fairly run of the mill magic, except for a twist that favors the erotica nature of these (which is something I hadn't realized when I started reading; more on that aspect below). There's a magical policeman (justicar) and the Muggle lord -- disowned son shipped off to China - turned trader - turned sole heir when his father and older brother mysteriously commit suicide -- who needs to be protected from evil magic. It's a m/m romance, you see where this is going, of course.
The most enjoyable thing about these books to me is Lucien (lord Crane), said Muggle earl. Well, not entirely Muggle, because it turns out that spoilers!! he's actually the last scion of the founder of modern magic, and has some latent talent. He cannot use magic himself, but he can serve as a source for a practitioner (=magician) if his substance is mingled with theirs. Blood is normally used for this purpose and that's dark ethically challenged magic, but fortuitously it turns out that "birdspit" (supposed euphemism for "semen", but Google doesn't seem to know this...) works too, though it's got a much lower efficiency coefficient. Anyway, all that is window dressing as far as I'm concerned, because the thing I like about Crane is that he's kind of a jerk, unimpressed with England in the extreme, ready to shake the hand of whoever offed his terrible father and brother, stubborn as hell, and with a tendency to mouth off when pushed agains the wall -- all very entertaining to me. His relationship with his cranky manservant/bodyguard/father-substitute/whatever Merrick is also a lot of fun, and in the second book I also liked his friendship with Leo(nora) Hart, who, like he, grew up in China hanging around with smugglers and the like.
Stephen, the magical policeman, works for me less well -- his issues are pride and a(n understandable) reluctance to trust. I do like that he is very serious about his job and uncompromising and ruthless in his pursuit of justice -- he insists on discovering and prosecuting the murderer(s) of the men who ruined his father and assaulted his mother while Crane is all too happy to let that go as a public service, he executes (as is his right and duty) a warlock without blinking an eye. I like Stephen's squad and friends, too, the Golds and Jenny Saint, although we haven't seen very much of them so far.
There is a nominal mystery plot, but it's actually a kind of mystery plot that annoyed me -- the clues and connections required to figure out what's going on are simply not there for the reader (with only the exception of the death-without-blood to put the shaman spirit to rest at the end of the second book as something adequately foreshadowed, and even that required a sizeable leap of logic). Like, the key to the string of murders in the second book turns out to be deaths that nobody ever mentioned until Leo Hart brings them up. And the first book is even worse -- all of these bad guys who are connected together are tied to somebody Stephen defeated before the book starts, but none of those connections are introduced or seeded in any way before he figures it out. It's like having a mystery plot without doing any of the work, which is an approach that irks me.
I like the dynamic between Crane and Stephen -- with one notable exception. I do like that each of them has his own life and priorities -- Crane his trade, Stephen his justicar role -- and neither would be willing to give that up for the other nor feels that would be desired or fair in any fashion. I like that they talk, that Crane asks questions while leaving Stephen room to not answer, that they try to understand each other's point of view and acknowledge it as reasonable instead of jumping to conclusions. There is a minimum of melodrama, which I was quite pleased with, and a lot of mutual respect.
Here's the exception, though: like 93% of the sexual stuff between them leans on tropes and kinks that are totally not my kinks. The most prominent is the size difference thing -- Stephen is only 5 feet and continuously described as small and lithe, and Crane is 6'3" and muscularly built. Crane is also older (by 8 or 9 years), richer, more socially elevated; Stephen has magic, true, and Crane keeps thinking how if one of them should be afraid of the other, it should be him of Stephen, and that Stephen is in control because of the magic... Which, Stephen *could* use magic to defend himself, if needed, but his power is a lot less overt than Crane's, so it didn't feel sufficiently balanced to me, at all. And these things are played up, with Lucien calling Stephen "sweet boy" and such, pulling him into his lap -- just, not my thing. Stephen also gets off on being the submissive one in bed, and always bottoms, and -- OK, so it's probably cliche and true of most of M/M stories? But compared to (good) fanfic, which tends to not be like that, it's rather cringeworthy for me when these are not tropes that work for me. And then there's the dirty talk, which just sounds ridiculous to me most of the time. So, basically, it's really frustrating -- I enjoy the romantic dynamic and the banter and flirting, and then we get to the -- so to speak -- money shot, and the whole thing just fizzles for me.
I highlighted quite a few passages of banter and snark, but as I paged through the Marks and Highlights later, none of them felt worth the effort of copying down for posterity. They're fun books that go down easy, though!
There is a third book and some interstitial short stories, and I will probably read them, too, for completeness and because I do like Crane and enjoy spending time in his company. But highbrow fare this certainly ain't...
bingo: author I haven't read before, queer protagonist(s)
60. Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five -- this is only the second Craft Sequence book I'm reading, because I was debating where to go from Three Parts Dead and egelantier helpfully explained the various orders in which the series could be read. I was a bit skeptical about Cat being in it, because she was my least favorite part of Three Parts Dead, but I liked her better here, so it all worked out.
This is a really impressive series. Like, the worldbuilding aspects are really neat and original and just plain amusing, and the prose is really great (and works for me in a way that the Matthew Swift prose, say, does not), and the characters are admirable and memorable if not someone I latch onto the way I do with my favorite characters. And, you know, the diversity is really impressive -- not just because there are so many women and POCs in the book, but because the different cultures really do feel different, and this stuff is mindful without feeling either pasted on or anvilicious/brownie-points-seeing, the way it often feels to me, especially in second-world fantasy where all the cultures must furnish their own context or feel pseudo-real world. Like, this book, right? The island culture felt like its own thing to me, and so did the glimpses of Izza's background -- and not monolithic, either. The two main POVs are both women (and both POCs, and one of them is trans), and so many of the supporting characters are, too, Cat and Mara and Ms Kevarian and Teo, as well as random background figures like cops and poets and businesspeople. (Also, the covers always draw my eye because I don't think there's a single non-POC character on any of them -- which, awesome for Gladstone that apparently he doesn't have problems getting his covers whitewashed. Although the person I presume is Kai on the FFF cover does not look anything like my mental image of her, more Chinese than Pacific Islander. But I like that she even has her cane on there, although in the picture it looks like an affectation rather than something she actually needs to get around after her injuries.)
I liked Kai a lot. I like the way Gladstone writes ambitious, big risk-taking, workaholic women in general -- as I mentioned in my write-up of the first one I read, I think, it's a character type you don't see very often outside of female antagonists, or as something to be softened and reformed as part of the character arc. I liked that Kai, like Tara, like Ms Kevarian, is good, and knows she's good, and goes and does the things she feels need to be done. And it's not just ambition, too, it's ambition and a strong sense of self wedded to a vocation, doing something they truly believe in. I'm not sure if I like Kai or Tara more at this point. Tara is funnier, I guess, and I appreciate that in a character, but Gladstones characters are also not the kind of characters I really fall for -- they are characters I respect, but that's kind of where it stops. I also like the way Kai being tans is presented; it's something we learn about her only later on (though I knew about it when I started the book), and it's not what her story is about, but it's also a part of her past, something that occasionally but powerfully colors her reactions to situations and to other people, like the pre-transformation trans acolyte she notices at the library. I've thought about it, and I think what I like best is how this aspect feels like an important but organic facet of her character: Kai is a person who does not lets anything except her own will and sense of self define her, whether what stands in opposition to that is a Penitent's whispers or corporate dogma or her own biology. It's all part and parcel of her integrity (in the sense of being herself), and it makes sense.
Other characters: I actually never got too much of a sense for Izza; I liked her in a sort of surface way, but I didn't feel like I knew her nearly well enough, because she's so busy running away from herself for most of the book. Jace was the kind of antagonist I like, someone who genuinely believes he's doing the right thing for the greater good (which was refreshing, after despicably self-serving Denovo). I liked Margot in his preparation for death, careful to edit the final draft of his life, and I liked Mako, and really liked the reveal, which I thought was very well handled -- it wasn't something I felt like I'd guessed even though it was pretty clear that he was more than just a random blind old man, and I even noted the similarity of his name to the name of Makewa. And I liked smiling swimmer Teo, and wanted to see more of her, which is why I went on to Two Serpents Rise as soon as I was done with the book, even though I'd thought I'd space them out a bit.
Oh, and the conversation between Teo and Kai about gods and faith and the origin of humanity is probably my favorite aggressively-Bechdel-Test-passing conversation ever. Here are some of my favorite bits of it:
Kai: What do you believe?
Teo: The fossil record. Old bones in caves. Evolution.[...]
Kai: Zurish gods made the sentient ice that walks Koschei's empire -- or the ice made the gods. Some dragons claim they made themselves, but you never really know with dragons.
Teo: Those are exceptions and you know it.
Kai: "An eon or so back, some people landed here after a long voyage, either from Kath or the Gleb, the Hidden Schools are still arguing which. And here, we became human."
Teo: "I get all that stuff about truth, but in the end you just sound like my girlfriend's art critic buddies, the ones who get a bottle of wine in their systems and weasel over whether we can ever really know anything at all, and how [...] any attempt to discuss objective fact buys into imperialist cultural narratives."
Kai: Things only happen [here] because a person demands them to.
Teo: Gravity still works though.
Kai: Gravity's a hard habit to break.
Teo: So's a heartbeat.
Kai: You've felt gravity longer than you've had a heart.
I like the worldbuilding setup of the book, the corporate magic/divine corporation version of the offshore tax haven, inaccessible to other gods, the idol industry which proves to be not as hollow as it was intended to be, the way it grew out of tragedy (the loss of the real gods in the God Wars) and that what remains, though apparently flourishing, is flourishing in an alien way to the island's real roots. The Penitents are a great addition to the world -- nightmarish, but one can see how they would have seemed like a good idea at some point, and they feel fitting for the setting, and for the personification of confinement that both Izza and Kai have nightmares about.
It feels more nuanced in this book than in the first one, less... sterile, which was a pleasant surprise. I mean, I do like the necromantic lawyers and their legalese and the networks of mortgaged soulstuff, but it makes for a fairly bleak world, which I think is one of the reasons that I enjoy these books without loving them outright. But the stuff at the end, with the network of idols learning selfhood, godhood from the shard of Seril, that was actually kind of hopefull-feeling. I'm glad that, in internal chronology, this is the last book.
The prose felt toned down a bit in this one, either because Gladstone's writing has toned down or because most of the POVs and/or setting are less conducive to that. I missed the really bright phrases, but it worked well for me on the whole, and I still noted down a lot of quotes:
Describing the pool: "Bubbles of reality jellyfished up to the distant surface."
Ms Kevarian: Her "eyes held neither pity nor humor, only a curiosity like Kai had seen in birds' eyes, alien, evaluative, and predatory."
Ms K: You imply that it [an idol] has gender and personhoold.
Kai: Language is weird like that. Archipelagese has a fine set of gender-neutral pronouns, but mainlanders don't like them for some reason.
"editorial by some bleeding heart in Iskar, suggesting that all the other bleeding hearts in Iskar join a crusade to stop the civil war in the Northern Gleb. No plan, just hand wringing and noble rhetoric."
Junk in Jace's office: "An onyx statue of a beetle, when touched, came to life and began carving the mountain's stone into new beeltes, who copied themselves in turn. A stack of papers in one corner had proved impossibly dense: seven hirelings strained to lift a single sheet. The papers had to be burned in place, and the resulting stink -- of burnt hair and melted flesh and not of paper at all -- lingered in the volcano's executive levels for a week.
After Izza tells Cat she's from Northern Gleb: "Izza saw behind those eyes the twist of thought she hated, that she'd run from the Old World to escape: the sudden re-evaluation, the swell of pity."
On being a priestess:
Izza: I know what that feels like, Faith seems fun. So does leadership. Everyone listens to you. Then you realize that it means the bastards come for you first.
Cat: The bastards always come, sooner or later. At least a priestess knows she'll be first in line.
Izza: Not much consolation.
Cat: No, I guess not.
Lines I liked about poetry:
"verses slipping tense and tenseless from Kathic to Archipelagese and back."
"And on and on, rapt and rigid, chest peacocked out, neck bullfrog bulged."
"Watch your fame grow in her [the muse's] absence as you struggle to mate dead words on dry paper."
"Would you tell Cathbart not to write about colors because he was blind? Or not to write about angelic battles because he'd never fought in one."
Mako: "Cathbart fought in the Tyranomachia, back in Camlaan, and angels never made so grand a war. And he'd seen for forty years before he lost his sight. You think we forget how these work once we lose the use of them?"
Mako: "Not to mention he thinks he's the only person on the planet ever thought of alliteration."
"Unnaturally white and gleaming, writhing with human bodies, the hotel reminded Izza of a layer cake overrun by ants and set afire."
"a thronged intersection where smuggler priests promised pieces of cut-rate heaven to passersby."
"the waitress looked over. Her sallow, up-all=night expression made her seem ten minutes' hassle short of serial murder, and with Mako she was counting down the seconds."
Mako re: Margot:
"He was a soldier?"
"No. he had that same aftermath feel though, an echo looking for the noise that made it."
"Point is, if you're a young man and you have nothing harder than a clock to fight against, 'fore long you make up things to do with your time."
"those boys got scars that night they'll wear with pride on day, once the fear fades enough to let pride back in."
Cat: "Gods, I love sports. All the excitement of real news, only it doesn't matter so you don't have to worry about it."
Cawleigh: "This is kingship, politics, murder. Awful lot of murder. Especially parties for some reason." (in-universe GRRM? :P)
"Twilling sounded genuine and superficial at once, as if he had read books about empathizing with employees and almost understood them."
"He hoped to offer friendly biographers no embarrassments, and unfriendly biographers no ammunition."
"Kai always made herself hot cocoa before a nightmare."
"Drowning sailors on the battered raft of her mind threw sacrifices to the adrenaline storm: snatches of poetry, school rhymes half-remembered, and at last, despairing, an image of a beggar girl on the sidewalk in front of Edmond Margot's apartment."
"Nick says they tried stuffing kids in Penitents once, but it didn't work. We break different."
"and he always felt it was a mistake to silo verticals, which phrase Kai understood but felt dirty for understanding."
"The poor swarm Dresediel Lex and Alt Coulumb in hungry millions, yes, but the most miserable hap-toothed glory-addict quivering on a Coulumbite street corner stands on the backs of a hundred men in lands he can't even name."
"And I won't sit here at the bar and drink self-pity until this world looks like the best possible."
Teo: "The only possible reason for their allies to come after me would be if your Order could prove I helped steal something they claim they don't have from a vault they can't afford to admit has been breached."
"where centuries ago the people of the islands imposed a beginning on time."
"The ocean lay like a blue razor against the throat of the sky."
Also, what is it with Gladstone and card houses? Temoc in the next book, and Kai and her sister in this one...
bingo: book with trans protagonist [this ticks off another bingo on the Serious card], book with POC protagonist
62. Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise -- I enjoyed this one less than either Full Fathom Five or Three Parts Dead, which I gather is not an uncommon view. I definitely still think it's a good book, and I'm glad to have read it, but it's not as FUN as the first one and did not feel as hopeful as FF5. Like, the post-God Wars world is a dark one in the other books, too, both for the magical horrors and the mundane reasons of poverty and addiction and the ugly side of ambition and all those things. But Tara is kind of hilariously oblivious to how creepy things are for much of the book, and for all the darkness in Izza's background and the fragility of island life, FF5 felt uplifting more than anything, and 2SR is just... not. It's probably a good thing this book exists, but it was too grim for my taste, even though there were definitely funny bits.
Two things about this I really liked: Caleb's relationship with Temoc and Caleb's relationship with Teo (whom I knew slightly from reading FF5 first) -- and come the end of the book, I liked the interaction between Teo and Temoc, too. I liked Teo and Caleb's friendship a lot -- it felt very real and natural and fun, and I perked up whenever they got to spend any time together. (I'm a lot less fond of Teo's girlfriend, who just seemed really tedious, in a "Tumblr SJW" sort of way -- I mean, caricature-level almost, though the narrative treats her with respect.)
Caleb and Temoc's relationship is so interesting! The first thing they made me think of was Duv Galeni and Ser Galen, for the ideological terrorist/resistance fighter vs bought-into-the-new-system divide, and I kept thinking how much more reasonably Temoc was portrayed, both in terms of what he was willing to do for his cause and in terms of the love and degree of acceptance he has for Caleb, despite their ideological differences. I found him so sympathetic that I had the very odd feeling of agreeing with him (vs Caleb) some of the time -- odd because I really hadn't expected to find the pro-human sacrifice side more reasonable. He makes some good points, though, the sacrifice still being there, just one of degrees, amortized and hidden from view, responsibility spread around so nobody has to feel like they're getting their hands dirty. And staking the fate of an entire city on a long shot out of squeamishness... Then, of course, Spoilers! his actual plan, the betrayal of Teo, who counts as a willing sacrifice only on a technicality. Anyway, I may have started with Ser Galen, but after a while the ideologically opposed parent-child pair Temoc was reminding me of were Roland and Kate Daniels, except that Temoc breaks into Caleb's house to build card houses and ask him about his love life, not to leave freshly baked cookies. I'm definitely looking forward to more Temoc in Last First Snow, although I do think I'll take a break before I embark on more Gladstone.
Kopil was kind of entertaining, too, but not on the same level. But just the mundanity of a skeleton walking around with a coffee cup, foot-bones clacking, was really amusing.
What didn't work for me was Mal, either as love interest or antagonist. She just wasn't interesting, compared to the other characters, or especially believable. And Caleb's infatuation with her and chasing after her made the plot drag.
I do actually like Caleb, but he is a much more "average joe" sort of protagonist than the other books have. I mean, Abelard is, too, and it's quite endearing, considering the later reveals, but the other books have alternating POVs, at least some of which are intense and driven, and most of 2SR is Caleb's mind, until fairly late in the plot and with the exception of the interludes.
I also felt like the prose dragged for me more here than in the other books -- the description of the chases, the fight against Allie, the rioting in the city (which introduces some POVs that I really did not feel added much to the proceedings). From a worldbuilding perspective, it was neat to get a Craft take on industry after the lawyers of book one and finance stuff of FF5, but it also felt less inventive and varied, in the grand worldbuilding scheme. Not as strong as the other books, in other words.
Quotes:
"a ten-story metal pyramid built by an Iskari architect mimicking Quechal designs. Over the door, a plaque bore the building's name in an art deco perversion of High Quechal script"
"They forced him to complete forms in triplicate, in cuneiform, in blood."
"Caleb was almost glad for the blackout: darkness made the room look like the chaotic abode of a dangerous mind, rather than a chamber cluttered with a young man's junk."
Alaxic to Kopil: "I leave you to iherit the rising salaries and health-care costs of my employees, my tempestuous engineering department, and my other bureaucratic diseases."
"Their games proceeded in traingular fashion -- Caleb lost to Teo, who loved chess though she did not study it, and Teo lost to Sam, who was too busy railing against the hierarchical relationships encoded in the rules to notice how blatantly Teo let her win. Sam lost to Caleb, and the cycle repeated."
"Death takes time. There are classes, support groups, premortem exercises."
Alaxic and Kopil:
"Makes me glad I'm retired."
"Are you really?"
"Glad?"
"Retired."
Mal: "You don't get to choose your parents. Why should your gods be any different?"
"Teo had tickets to the Eclipse Games, but Sam refused to come -- the contest was part of the commercialization of a sacred holiday, she said, though she lacked a trace of Quechal blood."
Fireworks: "Empire of Deathless Koschei ordered a solid month of festivities to celebrate the construction of the Dread Lord's golem son."
"'Father,' he said. 'Put Teo down, or y9ou'll have to hit me again.'"
Temoc: I apoogize for hitting you. I do not relish striking women.
Teo: Thank you, for your condescending, sexist apology.
Caleb: If we sacrifice someone to stop Mal, she's won.
Temoc: Sophistry. If we sacrifice someone to defeat her, she has lost.
"Girlfriend?" Temoc said.
Teo: Do you have a problem with that?"
"No," he replied. "You would risk your own death to save the city."
"Of course."
Caleb taking Temoc on his shoulders: "The world pitched and righted itself, heavier. [...] The first ten steps were the hardest, except for the next ten, and the ten after that."
"Sanity was the gap between perception and desire, and that gap had closed. [...] What could she imagine that she could not create? What could she hate that she could not destory?"
61. KJ Charles, The Magpie Lord (A Charm of Magpies #1)
63. KJ Charles, A Case of Possession (A Charm of Magpies #2) -- these books were actually rec'd to me back during fandom_stocking, but I promptly forgot about them, until they started appearing in Yuletide discussions. I hadn't realized/had forgotten that one of the principals was a magical policement, which intrigued me, for obvious reasons. I tried the first book, and it was fun enough, in a mindless sort of way -- the literary equivalent of cotton candy. But cotton candy was what I was feeling like at the time, so I read the second one, too.
The setting is Victorian-England-with-magic -- fairly run of the mill magic, except for a twist that favors the erotica nature of these (which is something I hadn't realized when I started reading; more on that aspect below). There's a magical policeman (justicar) and the Muggle lord -- disowned son shipped off to China - turned trader - turned sole heir when his father and older brother mysteriously commit suicide -- who needs to be protected from evil magic. It's a m/m romance, you see where this is going, of course.
The most enjoyable thing about these books to me is Lucien (lord Crane), said Muggle earl. Well, not entirely Muggle, because it turns out that spoilers!! he's actually the last scion of the founder of modern magic, and has some latent talent. He cannot use magic himself, but he can serve as a source for a practitioner (=magician) if his substance is mingled with theirs. Blood is normally used for this purpose and that's dark ethically challenged magic, but fortuitously it turns out that "birdspit" (supposed euphemism for "semen", but Google doesn't seem to know this...) works too, though it's got a much lower efficiency coefficient. Anyway, all that is window dressing as far as I'm concerned, because the thing I like about Crane is that he's kind of a jerk, unimpressed with England in the extreme, ready to shake the hand of whoever offed his terrible father and brother, stubborn as hell, and with a tendency to mouth off when pushed agains the wall -- all very entertaining to me. His relationship with his cranky manservant/bodyguard/father-substitute/whatever Merrick is also a lot of fun, and in the second book I also liked his friendship with Leo(nora) Hart, who, like he, grew up in China hanging around with smugglers and the like.
Stephen, the magical policeman, works for me less well -- his issues are pride and a(n understandable) reluctance to trust. I do like that he is very serious about his job and uncompromising and ruthless in his pursuit of justice -- he insists on discovering and prosecuting the murderer(s) of the men who ruined his father and assaulted his mother while Crane is all too happy to let that go as a public service, he executes (as is his right and duty) a warlock without blinking an eye. I like Stephen's squad and friends, too, the Golds and Jenny Saint, although we haven't seen very much of them so far.
There is a nominal mystery plot, but it's actually a kind of mystery plot that annoyed me -- the clues and connections required to figure out what's going on are simply not there for the reader (with only the exception of the death-without-blood to put the shaman spirit to rest at the end of the second book as something adequately foreshadowed, and even that required a sizeable leap of logic). Like, the key to the string of murders in the second book turns out to be deaths that nobody ever mentioned until Leo Hart brings them up. And the first book is even worse -- all of these bad guys who are connected together are tied to somebody Stephen defeated before the book starts, but none of those connections are introduced or seeded in any way before he figures it out. It's like having a mystery plot without doing any of the work, which is an approach that irks me.
I like the dynamic between Crane and Stephen -- with one notable exception. I do like that each of them has his own life and priorities -- Crane his trade, Stephen his justicar role -- and neither would be willing to give that up for the other nor feels that would be desired or fair in any fashion. I like that they talk, that Crane asks questions while leaving Stephen room to not answer, that they try to understand each other's point of view and acknowledge it as reasonable instead of jumping to conclusions. There is a minimum of melodrama, which I was quite pleased with, and a lot of mutual respect.
Here's the exception, though: like 93% of the sexual stuff between them leans on tropes and kinks that are totally not my kinks. The most prominent is the size difference thing -- Stephen is only 5 feet and continuously described as small and lithe, and Crane is 6'3" and muscularly built. Crane is also older (by 8 or 9 years), richer, more socially elevated; Stephen has magic, true, and Crane keeps thinking how if one of them should be afraid of the other, it should be him of Stephen, and that Stephen is in control because of the magic... Which, Stephen *could* use magic to defend himself, if needed, but his power is a lot less overt than Crane's, so it didn't feel sufficiently balanced to me, at all. And these things are played up, with Lucien calling Stephen "sweet boy" and such, pulling him into his lap -- just, not my thing. Stephen also gets off on being the submissive one in bed, and always bottoms, and -- OK, so it's probably cliche and true of most of M/M stories? But compared to (good) fanfic, which tends to not be like that, it's rather cringeworthy for me when these are not tropes that work for me. And then there's the dirty talk, which just sounds ridiculous to me most of the time. So, basically, it's really frustrating -- I enjoy the romantic dynamic and the banter and flirting, and then we get to the -- so to speak -- money shot, and the whole thing just fizzles for me.
I highlighted quite a few passages of banter and snark, but as I paged through the Marks and Highlights later, none of them felt worth the effort of copying down for posterity. They're fun books that go down easy, though!
There is a third book and some interstitial short stories, and I will probably read them, too, for completeness and because I do like Crane and enjoy spending time in his company. But highbrow fare this certainly ain't...
bingo: author I haven't read before, queer protagonist(s)